I was determined to bring you back something from Mongolia, and despite the difficulties of travelling in a country without roads, I was lucky enough to encounter five Mongol villages where I found these really interesting nomads…. I was received in each village… by the chief who invited me into his tent. I had to sit on the ground, legs folded beneath me, and drink “koumis” – a horribly bitter, sickly liquor made of fermented mare’s milk. I managed to overcome my disgust and so thankfully was able to take pictures of tents, men and women. The women didn’t want their picture taken, but they were ordered to by the chief, who did everything he could to make me happy. These Mongols have a fierce pride not found among the Chinese – it was impossible to offer them anything in return, and it would have angered them to insist.

An excerpt from a letter to Albert Kahn from Stéphane Passet, dated 24 July 1912.

Image and text from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.

“Throughout the conflict, Kahn’s cameras would return to hospitals all over France. Nurses figure prominently in a number of autochromes; in his pictures, as in the newspapers of the day, they were often represented as archetypal ‘invasion heroines,’ working selflessly, often in the danger zone, to save the lives of those who were so valiantly fighting the Boche. One picture, taken with characteristic panache by Stéphane Passet at a hospital near the Somme in July 1916, was composed with special care. In it, the nurse has a lambent patina – almost an aura – that reinforces the near-mythic lustre of her profession.”

Moreuil, France | 30 July 1916

Sunlight kisses the uniform of a nurse tending to casualties at a chateau that has been converted into a hospital at Moreuil, around 10 miles southeast of Amiens. In this autochrome, Passet’s chiaroscuro lighting gives his heroine an angelic radiance.

A7795 Stéphane Passet

Image and text from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.

“Among the very first entries in the Musée Albert-Kahn’s registers is a plate numbered A6. Shot by the photographer Jules Gervais-Courtellemont (1863–1931) during his 1909 visit to Algeria, it is a simple image of a humdrum event: it shows nothing more thrilling than a young woman weaving a carpet. Although she is pictured from behind, we can see her fingers drawing threads between the cords stretched vertically over the loom. It is reasonable to assume that she is making it for the tourist market, because the word “souvenir” is woven into its design.

Superficially, at least, the scene is unremarkable: a straightforward depiction of a quotidian event in an unexceptional North African setting. Yet the interplay of color is an opera of visual delights. The rich crimson of the girl’s headscarf is a shrill counterpoint to the yellow vibrato in her carpet, the gold coloratura of her blouse and the blue baritones of the rug below.”

Photographed in color in 1909, the young weaver at this loom in Algiers was probably working from home. For many families, rug-making was a cottage industry.

A6 [detail] Jules Gervais-Courtellemont.

Image and text from The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Archives of the Planet by David Okuefuna.